


Rewards

by Darkestwolfx



Series: March Prompt a Day 2020 [13]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Gen, Rewards, the long reach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23249347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkestwolfx/pseuds/Darkestwolfx
Summary: Sometimes it seemed like your actions would never be rewarded. It will always come; some rewards just take longer to see.
Series: March Prompt a Day 2020 [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1660813
Kudos: 8





	Rewards

**Author's Note:**

> This one took a bit of thinking, but then it came to me. I'm still planning to get all of these up by the end of March! Have faith.

**13: Rewards**

Full prompt: _"The future rewards those who press on."_ – Barack Obama

Summary: Sometimes it seemed like your actions would never be rewarded. It will always come; some rewards just take longer to see.

Words: 1257

Spoilers: _'The Long Reach'_ [S3E25&26].

* * *

He could easily have given up. All too easily. But there was lots waiting for him back home and he longed to see it again. So he'd push on, see where it got him, and if he lived another ten, maybe even thirty years, maybe even all of his life here, he hoped one day his efforts would mean something, bring him something.

But even if they never did, he wasn't going to give up. Because he had too much waiting for him back home to not even give it a shot of belief and hope. The chance to go home was worth more than giving up.

It might take a toll on him, but if it worked, if he could press on, survive and go home… well, there was no toll that couldn't eventually cure.

*****

It was hard. Hideously, atrociously – Scott didn't think there were enough adjectives to describe what it had been like.

There was nothing which covered losing your Father. Nothing. No way of saying it which made it better, no platitudes or euphemisms which lessened the blow.

Nothing anyone could say or do to make it better, no matter what they thought they could try.

The only way Scott could find was to keep going. To keep everyone ticking over.

*****

John had thought it over for days on end.

Agonising days with gravity not helping to lessen the headache. He'd been living on Five part time for ages now and with Dad gone… He moved up there permanently. He was better placed to help his brothers from up there.

And he had better resources. He scoured the oceans and the skies and space for weeks before he settled with himself that Dad couldn't be coming back from this one.

With the heaviest of hearts and tears that he wouldn't have shed on Earth, he decided to push on. He would do nothing for himself, or Dad, if he gave up.

So, wiping at his eyes, he answered the next call. And then the next, and the next, and the next…

*****

_Push on, push onwards, keep going, don't stop, don't…_

Don't nearly punch a whole in the wall might be a good idea.

He couldn't help being angry and upset, but he couldn't be because that wasn't what any of the people he rescued needed to see and it wasn't what his brothers were used to seeing. He was the calm, the artistic, the dispute settler… he wasn't the sort of brother who punched holes in his bedroom wall. No, that was Scott, and possibly (though hard to tell at a young age) Alan too…

He knew no one would blame him. How could they? He had just lost his Father, but he didn't want that to be the person he became. After all, that wasn't what Jeff Tracy would have wanted for him. So the man might not be around, but Virgil didn't want to let him down.

He decided to go on. For Dad.

*****

Gordon had never imagined it would happen so soon. He knew it would happen _again,_ at some point it had too, but he'd always thought his parents would be old and grey before they went away; and yes, maybe that was a childish hope, but he had been a child, remember?

They were unlucky with Mum, to lose her like _that_ and so young, but now Dad too? It didn't seem fair that neither of them got to grow truly old like Grandma and Grandad.

It wasn't fair, and he didn't like it. He wanted to lay in bed and wake up with it all having been a bad dream, or never wake up at all.

But that didn't get life back.

So he went on, hoping one day he could get it back.

*****

He didn't want to do anything. He didn't know how to and part of him didn't want to. What use was there? He was just a kid and schoolwork was rubbish and now he had no parents. His prospects in life seemed so small for Scott wouldn't let him near International Rescue yet, not save test flights of three to learn how to pilot, or little trips out with them, but nothing big; nothing dangerous.

But every day they went into danger, and Dad had gone into danger, and he hadn't come back. Ok, it had taken several missions before it happened, but it had still only taken the one to lose him. What's to say, it wouldn't be the same before he lost one – or more – of his brothers?

The fear and the grief were gripping, but his brothers helped him through.

And maybe continuing wasn't all that bad. Difficult, but not as bad as he thought it would be. The world wasn't- couldn't always be doom and gloom.

*****

Any one of them could have easily given up.

At any point.

But it took eight years.

Eight years of strife and heartbreak and hard work, and – although none of it was really about the reward – at the end they received the greatest reward of all for any rescue, and one that nothing could ever trump.

They had Dad; Jeff had his sons.

Brains had his friend, and Grandma had her boy back.

It was the unthinkable, the unimaginable, yet it was real. It had really _happened._ That was a fact the boys had to reconcile themselves to every day. It was something Jeff still had to remind himself of when he woke up in an actual bed. A number that Grandma had to correct every time she went to cook dinner.

There was one more of them now. Like there used to be.

"And to think," Gordon had begun after Dad had settled back onto the Island, "If we'd stopped International Rescue eight years ago, you might not be here now."

"We wouldn't have done that!" Alan had insisted, but it remained that there was a silent consensus around the brother's seated at the table: _yes, we nearly did._

All it would have taken was for one of them to crack, to give up and stop, and down the whole thing would have gone like a stack of dominos. They lasted though, they held up because they were _together._

Jeff had laughed, traditionally, stepping back into the role of Dad with ease. But underneath all that he knew how the boys felt. He couldn't deny thinking the same – not of his sons, oh no, he'd kept every faith in them! But there had been many tough days and nights when he thought… what if he just stopped trying to find a way home, gave up his efforts and just waited to see if anything came. But he hadn't. He feared nothing would have come if he waited on his laurels.

He didn't say any of that though, just as the boys didn't.

Instead, as Grandma busied herself dishing up Meatloaf Surprise – Jeff had already asked what the 'surprise' was only to be met with grimaces abound – he picked up where Dad's always should.

"Well, we're all here because you kept up the hard work. Mother, what was it that President Father used to like said?"

"Which one, dear?"

"Um… he was in power when I was born, wasn't he?"

"Oh! Yes, wonderful speaker! Let's see, your Father quoted it all the time… Ah ha, _'The future rewards those who press on'._ That was it."

Well, that was definitely what they'd done, and now this was their reward.


End file.
